


Risks

by centreoftheselights



Category: Uglies Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Body Image, F/M, Misgendering, The Operation, Trans Male Character, Tumblr Prompt, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centreoftheselights/pseuds/centreoftheselights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in response to a prompt: a tricky trans character in ugliesverse and how they relate to the operation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risks

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from Tumblr user drcabl3 read: a tricky trans character in ugliesverse and how they relate to the operation/special circumstances/the govt.

I stared at the face in front of me, scrutinising every little detail. A twitch of my fingers, and the cheekbones grew broader by a hair. I doubted anyone else would notice the change, but it made me sigh.

My latest morpho was complete.

“Hey!” A familiar voice called through the door. “You’d better be ready to go!”

I scrambled to my feet, trying to close the image, but it was too late. Livvy burst through the door.

“Don’t tell me you forgot?” she teased. We’d gone boarding together every day of summer since we first moved into the dorms. I should have been ready for her, but I lost track of time. “What could be more important than me?”

She turned and stopped, transfixed by the man I had created. Long moments ticked by as she stared, and I wondered if she saw some resemblance, the faintest trace of the original image I started with.

“Who’s he?” she asked, a little breathless.

I guess not.

“No-one,” I said quickly. “Just a pretty face.”

“I’ll say.” She grinned. “But we have better things to do today, Kat!”

I scowled at the sound of the name, and she raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Do you have to call me that?”

“It’s your name,” she said, flatly. “Would you rather I started calling you Boy again? And I can go back to being Bumps?” She scowled.

We’d had this argument before, but I hadn’t been able to make her see how those things are different. It seemed to me that Livvy had always been Livvy, bright and irrepressible, whether I called her that name or not. But Kat felt like a stranger to me, like trying to squeeze my feet into shoes I wore as a Littlie.

I could put up with my Crumblies calling me that, but it was all wrong coming out of Livvy’s mouth. Boy is what she had always called me, but this summer, it just wasn’t good enough for her.

“I suppose not,” I said, hoping to avoid an argument. “Come on, let’s get going.”

I closed the picture on the wallscreen, grabbed my board, and headed out.

 

We’d lapped the park twice when Livvy asked: “So, are you coming tonight?”

“Again?” I hadn’t thought we’d be heading out again so soon. It feels to me that we’d spent more nights out of the dorm than in it this summer.

“That’s the plan.” She looked at me. “So, do you want to?”

“It’s a little risky, isn’t it?”

She gawked at me. “Are you feeling alright? What happened to that famous sense of adventure?”

I forced a laugh. I’d always gotten in trouble for going too far, for pushing myself too hard. I hadn’t minded the stinging scrapes on my knees, or wearing long sleeves to hide mottled bruises from the dorm minders after a bad tumble. Only a couple of weeks ago, hadn’t I been the first to try the roller coaster?

But this was different, and we both knew it.

“My birthday’s in a few months,” I pointed out.

Livvy grit her teeth. Then, in a voice so thin that the wind almost drowned it, she said: “You’re not coming, are you?”

I knew she didn’t mean tonight.

“No,” I replied. “I’m not.”

She flinched away from me as though I had struck her.

“I don’t want to go out there any more,” I continued. “The more I know... they’ll ask me about it, once you’re gone. I don’t want to be able to give anything away.”

“Kat, please,” she whispers. “You don’t have to change for them. _We’re_ _not_ _ugly_.”

I shook my head. I knew what she was trying to say, what she had been trying to tell me for weeks. But that wasn’t what I meant.

“I’m not changing for them. I’m changing for _me_.”

“I can’t –” She folded her arms. “I’m going. With or without you.”

I hadn’t expected anything less.

“I don’t want you to stay for my sake,” I insisted. “You deserve your chance. And I promise, I’ve never thought you were ugly.”

She stepped forwards, closer to me. I could see the thoughts cross her face as clearly as if she spoke them aloud. I had kissed her once, last summer, and she had told me she didn’t feel that way about girls. That had made me laugh until I cried, but I never told her why. I wished I had the words to tell her now, to make her see that none of this had ever been her fault.

“Kat,” she said softly. “If this – If I –”

“No,” I told her. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. So aren’t you glad we didn’t?”

There’s a tear running down one of her cheeks, and I wanted to wipe it away. Instead, I pulled back, turned away. Her footsteps didn’t follow me.

I hoped I had made the right choice. I didn’t know what kind of say I might have in my Operation, if they even asked that kind of question. Perhaps the standard Operation would be enough, once I had it. But even if it wasn’t – well, Pretties could get away with anything, couldn’t they? Provided they were still Pretty.

This was the risk I had to take. It was supposed to be my reward. The Operation made people happy with their bodies.

I had to find out what that was like.

I went up to my room, opened the morpho again, and looked him in the eye, the excavation of who I had always been meant to be.

“Just a few more months,” I told my future self for the thousandth time that day. “The Operation is worth the risks.”


End file.
